CHAPTER XXX.
THE ISLAND OF ALPHONSO.
We had some dread of savages, and being totally unarmed, we penetrated inland with more anxiety than pleasure at first; but ere long we became convinced that the island was totally destitute of human inhabitants.
No vestige of wigwam or hut, of road or path, nor even of the smallest track or trail (save such as the wild goats made) was visible anywhere, and thus we became impressed with new emotions of wonder and awe, in treading a soil where man lived not—where no human foot seemed to have trod, and where only the hum of insect life stirred the solitude of that wild island of the South Atlantic.
For a considerable distance we traversed flat ground that was covered with sedge grass, interspersed by shrubs of bright green. Beyond this level plain rose a series of ridges covered by trees, and those ridges formed the first slope of the great mountain, which was some thousand feet in height, and also of the great bluff we had first descried at sea.
We found Alphonso to be the largest of a group of three islands. It is a mass of rock nearly twelve miles in circumference. The other two are cavernous and inaccessible, and every approach to them is dangerous and difficult, in consequence of the foaming of the sea about them, so that during the weary days of our sojourn there, we made no attempt to explore them, lest the longboat—in our circumstances a priceless property—might be swamped or dashed to pieces.
Hislop informed me that he had read somewhere that in the month of March, 1506—the same year in which the great Columbus died—two adventurers of Spain or Portugal, named Tristan da Cunha and Alphonso de Albuquerque, sailed for the Indies on a voyage of discovery, with fourteen great caravels.
During this expedition they found three great islands which they named after Tristan da Cunha, and elsewhere three others, which were named from Alphonso, who, after their fleet had been scattered by a great tempest, sailed through the Mozambique channel. He discovered many seas, isles, and channels hitherto unknown to the Portuguese or Spaniards, and ultimately reached the Indies, of which he became viceroy for Ferdinand the Catholic, and died in 1515, holding that office.
It is very strange that since that remote period, no European country has turned these islands to any account, as they do not lie more than fifty leagues from the general track of the shipping bound for the coast of Coromandel or the Chinese seas, and in time of war would form a useful and important rendezvous for a fleet.
They lie exactly in that portion of the wide and mighty ocean where it was fabled and believed a great continent would yet be found.